[Doug Drilling]

Here’s another odd tidbit. No matter what I changed as far as transocde settings in Encore, I couldn’t get it to tell me that I has less than 24.99G of stuff to burn – even though when I totalled up the size of everthing it was more like 23G. Very frustrating. So I finally just tried the “build” again. This time it burned the disc – as it started to burn it said “writing xx of 23.3G”. So at that point it had the space I’m using correct, but in the BUILD tab Encore was still telling me I needed 24.99G – which is too much to fit on a single layer Blu Ray disc – as it only actually has about 23.8G of available space to use.

Anyone have any thoughts on how Encore behaves with this? It’s been quite a challenge to get this project to burn and it really shouldn’t be that difficult. I’m just glad I’m not under a deadline like I’ve read in some posts from other folks 🙂

From this point on, it looks like it might be much easier for me to transcode using the Adobe Media Encoder 1st, then inport the already transcoded files into Encore. Doing that with 1 of my sequences is what eventually allowed me to finally complete a build on this project.

[Doug Drilling]

No – I just have the transcode set on automatic. But I’ve continued to play with this and what’s really odd is the sizes of the already transcoded sequences keep changing in Encore. I know they don’t actually change since they’re already transcoded, but for some reason Encore shows them as different sizes depending on when I look at them. For example, I have about 9 sequences from Premier which have been transcoded in Encore. One of them shows up as 5.25G size when I look at it in Encore. But I reverted a different sequence to the original video so I could re-transcode it using lower quality settings to reduce the size. When that was done the sequence that was already transcoded – and I didn’t touch – was now showing up as 6.87G in Encore. What’s up with that? And even though I reduced the total size of my transcoded project down by about 2G, Encore still said I had 25G of stuff to burn. That’s just not right. Before I reduced one of the transcoded files by 2G Encore said I had 25G of stuff to burn. Now that I’ve shaved off 2G it should be saying I have 23G of stuff to burn and it should fit on a single layer bluray. We’ll it doesn’t – it still says I have 25G of stuff to burn. I just don’t get it…. No matter how I play with transcoe settings, Encore still says I have 25G or more of stuff to burn, but I need to get it down to something like 23.8G to fit on a bluray.

[Doug Drilling]

This is probably my final post on this topic as I was finally able to successfully build a DVD! However, I have concluded that I have absolutely no clue why I’m getting this aspect ration error from Encore. I basically tried doing the project from scratch. I started from Preimier using Dynamic Link and set hte project up as a DVD project – not Bluray. Then I started to basically rebuild menus again. I would do test builds along the way to find out if anything I’m doing would cause the aspet ratio error before I spent too much time. During my 1st attempt I did start getting the aspect ratio error again and had to abort that attempt as I could not do anything to get rid of the error once I started getting it. And I have no idea what I did to trigger this error again.

On my next attempt I just created a DVD project in Encore from scratch and imported my video which had already been transcoded. I brought in the chapter points and everything. But the chapter point names were all gone so I spent a lot of time going thru renaming them all again. There were also a lot of duplicate chapter points which I had to remove. Not sure how those all got there. Then I tried reusing menus I had already created from a previous version of the project which was getting the aspect ratio error. I was trying to save time so I didn’t have to totally rebuild my menus again. I basically openned the project which was failing due to the aspect ratio error and added the existing menus to the Library. Then I opened the new project and was able to add these menus from the Library. So at least I had the basic structure for the menus. But it still took a considerable amount of time to reset all the links, etc. on each menu. When this was all do I held my breath and tried to build. It was successfull!!!! And I have absolutely no idea why. I was basically using all the same assests (video, menus) from the project that was giving me the aspect ratio error. Yet in this project all those assests worked fine and I was able to complete the build.

I may contact Adobe to try to get more information, but I suspect they don’t really care. I really think this is some kind of bug in Encore – especially since I’ve found a few more things that just don’t work (link saving presets). Hopefully Adobe will be releasing updates to correct some of these. This project took much longer to complete that it should of taken.

If anyone has any suggestions based on my experience, I’d love to hear any insights you might have. Thanks!

[Doug Drilling]

I did a little more “testing”. I basically started from scratch – taking the project I have in Preimier and doing another Dynamic Link to Encore – this time I indicated I wanted to create a DVD project in Encore. I used the same transcode setting for the DVD as listed in my previous post. Transcoding went fine and I was able to successfully burn a DVD!!!! But with only 1 very simple menu. Then I started adding things a little a time – doing test burns along the way. Things went fine until I added a button that had a special background layer. Then I started getting the aspect ratio error again. Is this something you can’t use on a DVD??? When you hover over the button an image shows up in the button (new layer).

Anyway, the problem is even when I remove these I’m still getting the aspect ratio error. I’ve basically reverted back to something that was just working, but Encore keeps giving me the aspect ratio error. Very frustrating. So I may need to start from scratch – again.

Any suggestions before I pull out all my hair 🙂